Kent Together privacy notice

This notice explains what personal data (information) we hold about you, how we collect, how we use and may share information about you when you contact the COVID-19 Kent Together helpline by phone or online form. We are required to give you this information under data protection law.

Who we are

We collect, use and are responsible for certain personal information about you. When we do so we are regulated under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which applies across the European Union (including in the United Kingdom) and we are responsible as a ‘controller’ of that personal information for the purposes of those laws. Our Data Protection Officer is Benjamin Watts.

Many people will have trusted friends, family and neighbours they can call on for support. Where this is not the case, we are working together with all the local authorities, fire, health and police services to organise help and assistance for communities and vulnerable people across Kent. As part of this we are providing a community support helpline (“Kent Together”) to help people reach the support they need as easily as possible. The helpline can be accessed online, using a form, or by telephone.

Personal information we collect and use

Information collected by us

We will collect personal information directly from you or receive it from third parties. We only receive your personal data from outside agencies or third- parties where there is a sound legal basis and purpose for doing so.

When gathering and using personal information, we will comply with the data protection principles. When you contact us through the Kent Together helpline or online form, we may collect the following personal information from you:

names and contact details for members of your family and support network

information about your support need(s)

special category data (known as ‘sensitive’ information), such as your health/disability information.

Collecting and sharing your personal information

In the course of working with you, we will (where relevant to your circumstances) collect information from, or share it, with some of the following third parties:

Kent district and borough councils

central government

partner agencies, such as volunteer organisations in the community

other Kent County Council services such as Adult Social Care and Health and Children’s Social Care.

How we use your personal information

We will use your information to start the process of applying for Kent Together community support. The information we collect will be passed onto the relevant district or borough council, or Kent County Council department, so they can then arrange the required assistance, as applicable.

How long your personal data will be kept

We will only hold your personal information for as long as necessary. To work out how long we need to keep your information for, we use our retention schedule.

If you call our COVID-19 response helpline, calls will be recorded for training and monitoring purposes and to help us deal with customer feedback. Recordings are stored securely for up to 6 months then permanently deleted.

Reasons we can collect and use your personal information

When we collect your personal data, we rely on the following legal bases:

Processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller.

When we collect your special category data, we rely on the following legal bases:

Processing is necessary for the purposes of carrying out obligations in the field of social protection law.

Processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest (for statutory and government purposes, safeguarding of children and individuals at risk).

Our Contact Centre

To help deal with incoming telephone contact efficiently, calls to the helpline will be managed by our contact centre.

All our contact centre advisors are employees of Agilisys, which operates the Contact Centre on our behalf. They are based at County Hall in Maidstone.

Only authorised members of staff have access to the call recordings. Call recordings may also be shared with a limited number of authorised members of our staff, as part of our quality monitoring processes and complaints handling procedures.

Your rights

Under GDPR you have rights which you can exercise free of charge which allow you to:

know what we are doing with your information and why we are doing it

ask to see what information we hold about you (subject access request)

ask us to correct any mistakes in the information we hold about you

object to direct marketing

make a complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office.

Depending on our reason for using your information you may also be entitled to:

ask us to delete information we hold about you

have your information transferred electronically to yourself or to another organisation

Keeping your personal information secure

We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to know it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.

Contact

Please contact the Information Resilience and Transparency Team at data.protection@kent.gov.uk to exercise any of your rights, or if you have a complaint about why your information has been collected, how it has been used or how long we have kept it for.